Annual community novels – we write the intros, the outline, and some of the chapters.

bi-monthly print newspaper, mailed to 47,000 households

catalog records!

tipsheets

videos

content for classes, events, and seminars

internal Intranet posts

emails. Those count, right?

RFPs, resolutions, executive briefs

etc.

I think we make a bit of content, don’t you?

The speaker was an academic librarian. I’m just guessing here, but … LibGuides (used by many academic libraries) are content. Presentations, bibliographic instruction, handouts … content. Special collections archives and digitization? Content. All the words describing all the services and stuff? Content.

Heck – the speaker’s presentation … was content!

Moral of the story: don’t ever let a librarian say we aren’t content creators. Because we totally are.

1. Give people only what they need. (pg 126-127). Write from your site visitor’s perspective. Do they really care about the entire history of your project? Probably not. Do they want to hear how much you welcome them before you show them what you have to offer at what price? Probably not.

Really good point, and most library websites are guilty of that! If it isn’t important to your customers, cut the extraneous content, put it at the bottom of the page, or include it as a link to a separate page with all the gory details.

2. Focus on the essential message. A similar idea (on page 132) talks about how to cut down to essential messages. Redish includes 6 points. Point #3 is awesome – “focus on your site visitors and what they want to know.” “Cut out words that talk about you or your organization – unless your site visitors want or need that information.”

Great, simple pointers on how to improve that web writing … yet so hard to do. Read the book for more tips and pointers on writing for the web.